Plate Tectonics Theory, Essay Example

The sciences of geology and plate tectonics owe much, if not all, of their existence to marine fossils discovered on mountain ranges by geologists, largely of amateur standing, in the 19^th century; without these clearly displaced remains, the concept of tectonics might never have been introduced.

It was in fact a Scottish geologist named James Hutton who, in the mid-18^th century, first stumbled upon the idea of shifting plates beneath the crust of the earth as being ultimately responsible for ancient marine fossil evidence far above where it was expected to be found. “Marine fossils on mountaintops, he decided…had risin along with the mountains themselves. He also deduced that it was heat within the earth that…thrust up mountain chains” (Bryson 86).

Hutton’s theories were largely dismissed, and for a very long time. The leading scientists of the day were still clinging to catastrophism, the belief that violent episodes in the planet’s past had shaped the world we know today, and were done. Hutton advanced uniformitarianism, which dictated that forces at play thousands of years ago were still changing the face of the Earth. Eventually, other prominent minds joined forces to support, and then scientifically validate, Hutton’s claims.

We know today that the continents are in a state of flux, as we have isolated the tectonic plates creating these gradual shifts in continental positioning. The Ural Mountains, where marine fossils were first spotted by coal miners, arose between two to three-hundred million years ago.  “Complete closure of the (ocean) basin results in a continent-continent collision, such as occurred in the Permian when Baltica collided with Siberia, forming the Ural Mountains” (Condie 12). The single, vast continent of Pangea was forming as the plates forced land masses into one another and literally squeezed out the intervening ocean while lifting what had been ocean floor.

Works Cited

Bryson, B. A Short history of Nearly Everything. New York, NY: Random House, Inc., Print.

Condie, K.C.  Plate Tectonics and Crustal Evolution. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998. Print.